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In a sign of the market shifting from HDDs to SSDs Seagate announces it will stop production of 2.5-inch HDDs with 7200rpm spindle speeds by end 2013.

The company also says it will start selling 2.5-inch 5400rpm HDDs for value notebooks.

Mobile HDDs with 7200 RPM rotational speeds are something of a minority, generally finding use in high performance notebooks for professional or prosumer customers.

Seagate currently offers 4 different 2.5-inch 7200 RPM drives-- the Momentus 7200.4, 7200.2, Momentus Thin 7200 and the Momentus XT, a hybrid product combining conventional spinning platters with 8GB of solid-state storage acting as cache.

Either way, expect more Seagate SSD products in the near future.

Go Seagate

Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2013 hosted more than just mobile devices-- Samsung revealed the HomeSync Media Hub, the company's answer to STBs of the Apple TV variety at the Barcelona show.

An Android-powered (Jelly Bean, specifically) yet non-Google TV device, the HomeSync carries a 1.7GHz dual-core processor, 1TB of storage and allows one stream content a variety of sources via HDMI, USB, ethernet, wifi and Bluetooth to HDTVs.

Galaxy device owners can also use the STB to view stored media on bigger displays.

Samsung gives no details on the interface the HomeSync adopts (other than that it should be a familiar experience for Android users) but confirms Google Play store acess and support for up to x8 separate user accounts (complete with file encryption and user-specific IDs and passwords).

The HomeSync will be available from April 2013.

Go Samsung HomeSync

If Microsoft has its way, Surface devices will be omnipresent-- not only tablets and smartphones, but as wall-sized touchscreens and interactive tables, all of which smart and seamlessly connected.

Such a vision comes from the trailer announcing the opening of the new  Microsoft Envisioning Centre, whose mission is creating not the next generation of Microsoft computing, but products for the next 5 to 10 years.

According to the 2 minute video nearly every available surface is interactive, since giant touchscreens pepper the walls both offices and homes. All the displays are interconnected, meaning users can instantly beam and interact with data from tablets and smartphones (such as family photos or work schedules) on the bigger screens.

Meanwhile children play on tablets as they watch grandma read bedtime stories (which in turn unfold on screen as interactive cartoons) on the living room TV.

Metro confirms earlier reports of its giving up on the Chinese dream-- Media Markt China will close all 7 stores on March 11 2013 before operations shut down entirely on 30 April 2013.

The reason the retailer gives for leaving China is the "highly competitive market environment," the same reason cited by Best Buy after quitting the Chinese market in 2011.

Founded by Metro in 2010 in joint venture with Foxconn, Media Markt China was meant to open up to 100 stores by the middle of the decade following a 2-year test phase. However the current European economic situation, paired with flagging sales in the biggest Asian economy, meant the Group could no longer invest in the Chinese operation.